This week we’ve seen how both liberalism and conservatism have deep evolutionary roots, and neither will ever Just Go Away. But our genes don’t dictate our political behavior, and thoughtful, persistent activism can enable change. (More)

Our Political Nature Part IV: Theories of Change (Non-Cynical Saturday)

This week Morning Feature explores Avi Tuschman’s new book Our Political Nature: The Evolutionary Origins of What Divides Us. Wednesday we saw how ‘social issues’ like racism and gender roles reflect evolutionary impulses for inbreeding and outbreeding. Thursday we saw the familial evolutionary roots of our different views on wealth inequality. Yesterday we examined why conservatives see life through the lens of competition, while liberals see it through the lens of cooperation. Today we discuss how to apply these insights in talking with Fred, our archetypal median voter.

Avi Tuschman earned a Ph.D in evolutionary anthropology from Stanford University. He has worked with presidents, prime ministers, diplomats, and legislators on five continents, as well as with multilateral banks to mediate social and economic conflicts in developing countries.

Please welcome Dr. Tuschman as he joins our discussions this week.

“I just saw someone who needed help”

On January 2, 2007, Wesley Autrey was waiting at a New York City subway station with his six- and four-year-old daughters when he saw a young man having a seizure. He and two women rushed to help the stranger, Cameron Hollopeter, but when Hollopeter tried to get up he stumbled and fell onto the tracks. Autrey saw the lights of the approaching train and jumped down to save Hollopeter. With no time to hoist the man up to the platform, Autrey instead pushed him into a drainage trench between the tracks and lay atop him as a shield.

Five cars went past before the conductor was able to stop the train. Fortunately, both men were unhurt. The media dubbed Autrey “The Subway Samaritan,” “The Subway Superman,” and “The Hero of Harlem.” For his part, Autrey told reporters:

I don’t feel like I did something spectacular. I just saw someone who needed help.

Stories like Autrey’s feel remarkable, and biologists struggle to explain why a man would leave two young daughters unguarded and put his own life in danger – risking a combined 200% of his genes – to help an unrelated stranger.

“Turn resources into offspring”

Yet people around the world risk their lives for strangers every day: as police officers and firefighters, EMTs and ER teams, and in exceptionally dangerous jobs that – in terms of individual evolutionary calculations – usually pay far too little to offset the risk of death or disability. Why do so many people do risk their lives for their communities?

The answer may lie in the controversial theory of group selection. This holds that individual-risking genes can propagate in social species if they elicit traits that offer survival advantages for groups in which they exist, relative to other groups of that same species in which those genes are absent. As we saw in our discussion of Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind:

Recent research has begun to revive group selection. Social insects account for over half of the insect mass on our planet, and some biologists now think that’s because their social structures gave them survival advantages over solitary insects. Much of that research has focused on direct conflicts between competing groups, and much of Dr. Haidt’s discussion focuses on that. Yet as one of his colleagues told him after reading an early draft of his chapter, group selection is not all about war. If a genetic change helps a group “turn resources into offspring” more efficiently, that group is more likely to flourish … and that genetic change is more likely to propagate.

Simply, a group with at least a few heroes like William Autrey will provide its members a bit more safety, and produce more offspring, than a group with no such heroes.

Meet Fred

Stories like Autrey’s matter when we talk with Fred, our archetypal median voter. As we’ve noted, Fred doesn’t watch cable news unless they’re covering a breaking event. He doesn’t subscribe to a newspaper, although he’ll scan headlines if he sees a paper at the store, or when he goes online. He doesn’t read political websites. He and Mrs. Fred may have the evening news on during or after dinner, but they’re probably also talking with their daughter, the Fredling.

Yet it’s a mistake to call Fred a “low-information voter.” Polls show Fred knows a surprising amount about current events, especially in his own community. He knew about the Great Recession long before the national media reported on it, because he saw friends, relatives, coworkers, and neighbors struggling to find jobs and keep their homes. Those friends, relatives, coworkers, and neighbors are Fred’s primary news sources, and his opinions on high-profile issues like Syria are very thoughtful.

Fred has no overarching political philosophy, except that he’d like government to help make things better or at least not make things worse. In general, Fred neither strongly favors nor strongly dislikes specific demographic groups. He tends to take people as he meets them – one at a time – and he looks at political issues the same way. That makes Fred biconceptual, in George Lakoff’s terms, more progressive on some issues and more conservative on others. In Dr. Tuschman’s terms, Fred has “low ideological coherence.”

“In most cases, moderate personality solutions proved fit”

Of course, archetypal Fred is a fictional aggregate of medians in census data and national polls. If anyone in America is exactly Fred – median age, family size, income, voting history, and giving the median response to every poll question – that’s a statistical accident. Or is it? Dr. Tuschman writes:

We’re here with the political orientations we have because our ancestors’ personalities helped them survive and reproduce successfully over thousands of generations. Their political personalities were instrumental in the regulation of inbreeding and outbreeding. These dispositions helped them mediate biological conflicts between parents, offspring, and siblings. And their moral emotions also balanced various types of altruism against self-interest in countless social interactions. In some types of social or ecological environments, more extreme personality traits were adaptive. In most cases, moderate personality solutions proved fit. That’s one reason why there are so many moderates among us. Another reason for moderates and flexibility is that environments change, so it wouldn’t make sense for our genes to rigidly determine our personalities.

Fred’s capacity to adopt liberal or conservative positions for a specific issue, depending on the circumstances as he understands them, is not a weakness. It’s an evolutionary strength. He maintains that flexibility because he’s not deeply invested in any ideology, and he doesn’t live on an “information island.”

Conditions of change

What conditions would change our statistical description of Fred, that is, the shape of a culture’s political distribution curve? Dr. Tuschman discusses several:

Wealth – In poorer cultures, the political distribution curve tends to be somewhat flatter, with fewer moderates and more people at both the conservative and liberal extremes. In wealthier cultures, the curve tends to be rounder, with more moderates and fewer people at either extreme.

Religion – In deeply religious cultures, the peak of the political distribution curve shifts somewhat toward conservatism. In very secular cultures, the peak of the curve shifts somewhat toward liberalism.

Climate – In warmer climates, the peak of the political distribution curve shifts somewhat toward conservatism, perhaps because xenophobia helps protect people from faster-growing pathogens. In cooler climates, the peak of the curve shifts somewhat toward liberalism.

Age – Teens and young adults are somewhat more liberal than adults 30 and older. That may be due to brain maturation, as the judgment centers we need for risk assessment aren’t fully developed until the mid-20s. It may also be due to parenthood and awareness of risks to and responsibility for children. But the evidence does not suggest we grow ever more conservative as we age. Instead, our political personalities seem to become stable at around age 30.

But the genetic predispositions for political behavior are only 40-60% predictive. Politics is an inherently social topic, and the other 40-60% of Fred’s views arise from shared experiences with family, friends, coworkers, and neighbors. That includes the conversations we call Fred Whispering, and stories of people caring for each other, like William Autrey.

Both liberalism and conservatism are deeply rooted in our evolutionary biology. Liberals and conservatives exist in every culture and, contrary to the wishes of some on both sides, neither liberalism nor conservatism will ever Just Go Away. But every culture also has lots of moderates like Fred, and Fred also offers his culture evolutionary advantages. To better enable positive, progressive change, we must stop hoping conservatism will Just Go Away … and start talking with Fred.

7 Comments

winterbanyan
on October 12, 2013 at 8:49 am

Fred’s capacity to adopt liberal or conservative positions for a specific issue, depending on the circumstances as he understands them, is not a weakness. It’s an evolutionary strength. He maintains that flexibility because he’s not deeply invested in political activism, and he doesn’t live on an “information island.”

I like this very much. It suggests to me a reasonable, persuadable person who will evaluate by thinking and experience, not by ideology. That’s a benefit to all of us.

Lots more in this article to contemplate. If time allows I may be back later.

NCrissieB
on October 12, 2013 at 9:17 am

Fred’s flexibility is indeed a benefit to all of us. As a progressive, it goes without saying that I think progressive solutions offer better benefits and fewer risks than conservative solutions. That conclusion is based on some research … and some confirmation bias.

Conversations with Fred often help me better understand the values and policies I advocate. And, sometimes, I change my mind … at least to recognize that a policy needs to be improved.

Okay then perhaps the civil rights movement has it right when they speak of the on-going struggle. The on-going quest for progress I can deal with. I was spoiled by graduating from high school and college in the 60’s. When I was young and going door to door in Wisconsin for Eugene McCarthy I thought everyone was a liberal, except perhaps for my dad who thought a peaceful poet as president was downright silly. I had seen and benefitted from so much positive (my view) changes that I could not imagine going backwards. President Reagan was my introduction to the idea that the political winds could blow both ways.

I wonder if certain economic events or situations, international affairs, racial, religious trends… if there are certain circumstances that result in widespread political shifts to either the right or the left. I wonder for example how much President Obama being a black man, a biracial man has energized the conservative backlash. I wonder also if ‘trickle down economics’ has perhaps run its course because Freds have realized that they are just getting the drips and no trickle. Will Fred and other moderates eventually flee from conservatives due to income inequality?

Fascinating series and since I have just started reading this, I feel bit guilty even commenting. I can easily see the possibilities for reviewers and pundits to take things out of context and misrepresent Dr. Tuschman’s work.

Thank you for your very thoughtful comments. Yes, there are numerous moving parts in public opinion that cause people’s attitudes to change, occasionally in dramatic ways. I discussed them in the conclusion of the book, with numerous examples. What’s interesting is that over long periods of time, opinions are not quite as flexible as many people may assume. There are, though, a minority of issues in which we see huge changes over time (such as approval of a woman’s right to work outside the home if her husband can support her, questions about race relations, etc.). However, even when there are large changes, the opinions of different segments of the population tends to move up and down in parallel. So even if in 20 years from now a large majority approves of gay marriage, there will still be greater disapproval among the conservative segments of the political spectrum in comparison with the liberal segments.

Also, the public is somewhat rational. So if an economic policy turns out to be an utter failure, people eventually find out and react, even if their ideologies pushed them towards it originally. But this takes time and is very costly, so it’s better to get it right the first time!

Lastly, I am happy that you see how easy it is for the media to cherry-pick excerpts from the book, pull them out of context, and to use them as partisan spears. This has been disappointing to me, since I’ve written this book through the lens of science and not to have a partisan agenda. My purpose here is not to push people to the left or to the right, but rather to push the public debate on to a much deeper and more objective level. It’s been difficult and often disappointing trying to get these ideas across in today’s highly politicized and conflictive media environment.

Again, I very much enjoyed reading today’s summary — with only one exception: group selection. On this topic I am agnostic at best. I have not seen any convincing evidence for this, despite having read Haidt’s and E.O. Wilson’s recent books. The analogy that we are like social insects is simply an analogy. Where are the parallels to the behavior of our closest living relatives, the other apes? There is no quantitative or experimental or any sort of proof in either of these two books. Most of the top evolutionists are not convinced. But I’ll be the first to change my mind if the evidence should turn up.

Okay, now that I’ve gotten that off my chest…

Just to clarify the bit about temperature, I quote from page 30: “hotter climates correlate strongly with Conscientiousness,” which in turn correlates with voting for the right. Other studies have shown that higher levels of historic pathogen prevalence (how many infectious diseases were present in an environment, not how fast pathogens multiply) correlate with politically conservative personality traits (scores on the F-Scale, as well as Collectivism).

For more information about the people in the middle of the spectrum, please see Appendix B, which is called “Joe the plumber, political elites, and the controversial existence of public opinion.” This bonus chapter shows that there is another spectrum that runs through public opinion, in addition to the left-right one. This second spectrum runs from low to high political coherence. The more education and interest people have in politics, the more stable and coherent their political ideologies are over time. Their views also polarize, normally in the direction of their predispositions. On the low end of this spectrum are people like Fred. They are in the middle of the curve. They are swing voters. Many of them aren’t very interested in politics, don’t show up at the voting booth, don’t know how many senators are in a state or what the name of the vice president is. In other words, they are not necessarily weighing different arguments carefully (although some people surely do). Some of them simply blame or reward and administration based on how well the economy is doing, regardless of its political ideology.

If you’re not convinced, go to Facebook and see how many conservative groups you can find, and then how many liberal groups you can find, and how many centrist or moderate groups you can find. Even though most people are in the middle of the spectrum (since it’s a bell curve), there are precious few groups for centrists or moderates compared with the people who have higher and more polarized ideological coherence. Sigh. To make matters worse, the more information we absorb about political events, the more partisan we become. This is because we simply grow more adept at organizing this information on top of our predispositions. And of course the changes in our media environment make matters worse. Not to mention gerrymandering, greater individualism, mobility, freedom in mate choice, etc., etc., etc.

The good news is that taking a step back and contemplating the science underlying political orientation tends to open people up to deeper understandings, increasing political moderation, and ultimately, greater peace of mind. That’s part of what compelled me to write this book. I hope that you’ll have a chance to read through it to see how these and other concepts fit together, how they relate to the news headlines, and to our personal lives. And I very much hope that you can share it with other people who vote with your party, as well as with friends of different political persuasions. Also, if you get a chance, I’d be grateful if you could leave a review on Amazon.

I posted a 5-star review at Amazon, with a link to our discussion this week. (They may take out the link to our discussion. I’m not sure.)

I understand your skepticism on group selection. It acquired a very ugly reputation from the 1920s-40s, and most of its claims can be explained in a broader notion of reciprocal altruism. In discussing that, you quote Martin Nowak: “I scratch your back and someone else will scratch mine.” For acts of heroism, that might be expanded to: “I scratch your back, others see that and scratch others’ backs, and this social norm of back-scratching benefits all of us (including me and/or my offspring).”

I have a higher opinion of Fred than do most political elites, including those who grade Fred’s political awareness based on civics quizzes. I spend a lot of time studying opinion polls, especially crosstabs on independent voters. I also spend a lot of time talking with Fred. I’ve found that Fred is no more ignorant than the average “news junkie,” and often less so, because so much of our political news is “junk news.”